Ani less edgy at the Palace

Ani DiFranco, folk singer extraordinaire, has played in so many incarnations it’s hard to keep track of them all.

She started in the early 1990s, playing solo in coffeehouses with shaved head and a song that used one of the worst cuss words in the English language. From there she went to a tight, funky trio, and then to an even larger ensemble complete with horns.

On Tuesday night DiFranco brought almost two decades of music to the Palace Theater, backed by a three-piece rhythm section.

And I never thought I’d say this about one of her shows … but I was bored.

As DiFranco approaches age 40 — with a daughter, two houses and her own label, Righteous Babe — she’s become just a tad mellower. She’s still the 5-foot-2-inch pixie who curses like a
truck driver and plays her acoustic guitars so fiercely it requires switching after every song so a techie can re-tune. But she hardly seems the nervous ball of energy who used to giggle
her way through dark topics all night long.

For Ani, apparently, there’s a lot less to hate about the world than there was a few years ago. And it showed.

Many of the songs — both new and old – were melodious, almost gentle affairs. A lot of the songs seemed to blend from one to the other, with nothing but her staccato chatter to separate
the pieces.

And her band didn’t help raise. Drummer Allison Miller never offered anything more interesting than a pedestrian beat. Upright bass player Todd Sickafoose was enthusiastic enough, but you could barely hear his efforts in the mix. And Mike Dillon’s vibraphones often just seemed a bit out of place.

Ani came out about 9 p.m. to a roar of approval. Under a set of subdued lights and a simple backdrop of white drapery, she kept a running dialog of spontaneous wit between each song.

Some songs came across stronger than others. The new “Atom” was a fierce look at what the nuclear age has meant to America. Other new songs, such as “present/infant” and “Both
hands” were nice enough — Ani described one as a song “my baby taught me” — but they just were not terribly memorable.

Through it all, though, Ani was still Ani. She encouraged her fans to vote, and talked about the abortions she had when she was 18 and 20, and how her mother had recovered from breast cancer. She told stories about being in New Orleans when Katrina hit. She even took a request from the audience, which clearly adored her.

“It’s a leading contender in my new thing, which is happy songs,” Ani said of one song. “It’s a whole genre of songs I haven’t explored.”

Well, the angry ones were better, I think. But the crowd seemed satisfied enough. And Ani, at least, ended on a high note, bringing the band to a boisterous conclusion — the classics
“Untouchable Face,” “Joyful Girl” and “Shameless,” before a two-song encore.